Boarded-up shops in the East Midlands. Vacancy rates tabulated in a new report threaten to create ghost towns. Photograph: David Sillitoe

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Wednesday 17 February 2010

Illustrating this story we used a photo of "boarded-up shops" from Nottingham. In fact, the frontage shown was formerly a restaurant. The picture was also outdated. Since it was taken in 2008, the bare plywood boarding has been replaced with ­patterned panelling.

Many of Britain's towns and cities are suffering from such huge shop vacancy rates that they risk becoming ghost towns, wiping hundreds of millions of pounds off property values, a study revealed yesterday.

Cities such as Wolverhampton and Bradford, where nearly a quarter of shops lie empty, could be on an irreversible downward spiral as a result of the financial crisis. The research by the Local Data Company shows retail vacancy rates across Britain rose 2% in the past six months of last year to 12%, with some towns seeing as much as 24% of its shops lying empty.

There is growing concern that spread of boarded-up high streets will lead to the increase in crime in towns and cities.

Barry Gilbertson, real estate partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, warned that up to a fifth of vacant retail property will never be reoccupied. "The high street has seen coffee shops, betting shops, charity shops, mobile phone shops and pound shops. What's coming next? It's hard to predict."

The worst place in Britain, says the study for the British Property Federation's retail summit, which started today, is Wolverhampton with a vacancy rate of 23.9% followed by Bradford and Sheffield. Scarborough has only 2.4% of its shops empty making the north Yorkshire coastal town the healthiest retail centre in Britain.

Towns and cities have been hit by a number of regeneration schemes becoming mothballed leaving compulsorily purchased shops in anticipation of revamps disused. Also a string of high profile retail failures – particularly in the furniture, carpet and off-licence sector –have left shops without tenants.

Liz Peace, chief executive of the BPF, said: "The fact of the matter is that Brits now do a lot more shopping over the web, so we're seeing a fundamental reshaping of high streets. The next government will need to balance cuts in spending with ideas for reinvigorating regions that have suffered from years of underinvestment."

Stephen Robertson, British Retail Consortium director general, said: "High street shops are often battling big bills for business rates and rents, parking and access difficulties, as well as failure to manage and invest in the area.

"High streets are the heart of local communities and economies, providing jobs and essential services. Their future success cannot be left to chance. Town centres need to be actively managed by local authorities with their retailers, other businesses and residents."

Wolverhampton disputed the figures that state it has more empty shops than anywhere else in the country. However, its city centre manager, Kim Gilmour, admitted that a moribund retail expansion plan – a victim of the financial crisis – means a large number of shops in the city are lying empty.

Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation, who was behind a series of reports on Clone Town Britain, suggested that the wholesale transformation of British retailing in which independent stores have largely failed to resist the tide of chains and superstores makes town centres more vulnerable to downturns.

"Past experience shows remotely owned chains tend to be fair-weather friends," he said. "As the economy changes and fails to match internal targets they are more likely to pull out unlike independent shops that are embedded in a community and more likely to go into savings to survive."